Champagne and Socks

Last week I caught a really interesting TED Talk By Lauren Zalaznick on the conscience of television. She talked about how TV shows have responded to our times. “That television is how we disseminate our value system.” She looked at the top 10 shows at points over the last 50 years and how they reflected our social conscience at that time – in response to things going on at that particular time. It’s a fascinating talk if you love TV.

I particularly am interested in TV before and after 9/11 because I guess that’s really my era and I’m interested in how television has changed and responded to events that I’ve lived through. Given that, I find flash mobs really fascinating. Firstly I LOVE THEM! (and the one below is an advert but still, it’s a great flash mob).  But what fascinates me about them is how the phenomenon is a complete juxtaposition to the rest of the way pop culture is responding, I think, to the state of the world. The world is pretty grim. Things are pretty right wing and all “with us or against us”. Our future looks grim too with more economic hard times to come, possible collapse of the European Union, a scary US election to come, climate change is happening whether the top dogs want to admit it or not and with that more and more extreme weather events seem to be hitting harder and harder.

What better response that for a bunch of strangers to suddenly break out into synchronous dance? Am I right?!